Will Gustav rain on your parade?

Some news headlines are asking the question: will Gustav rain on the GOP parade? Short answer - of course it will. The question is to what extent it will rain on your and my parade. Make no mistake - a storm of this magnitude, ploughing through 20% of the oil production capacity of the world's largest energy consumer (the USA feeds on about a quarter of the world's energy) means there's a good chance it will affect you in the suburbs whereveryou are in the world.

How will it affect you? Well, imagine there are 12 children at a birthday party and a cake, enough for all 12 kids, cut into 12 portions. But now you take away 1, maybe 2 portions of cake. What happens at the party? What do the children do? They start to bicker because there's not enough to go around. Do you think the kid who ends up with nothing accepts that with grace? Do you think the 10 kids who could conceivably each get a piece calmly wait their turn?

This is a scarcy prospect, because farflung countries like Australia and South Africa might have to go without energy for a while. That has implications and consequences. How will your suburb cope with energy supply cut off for an unpredictable period. How will you cope if you can't bicycle to work? Because the bottom line is that gas stations will run dry for a while, no one knows where, or for how long, and obviously with prices now at $120, they could go anywhere with a major supply shutdown.

It should also be borne in mind that Katrina pushed oil prices up and curtailed supply at a time when oil prices were sniffing way south of $100, in the good ol' days of 2005. Now we're at 2008 levels, $120 and economists, bankersand politticians are praying that the likes of Hurricane Gustav simply don't materialise.

You know you are in a really tight spot when you're gambling that the weather - with all the environmentaldamage we cause - plays ball. The odds are, these systems aregoing to get worse. It's the sort of situation where the only positive thing you can say (if we insist on being positive) is "Well, at least you have your health."

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk The US has only twice tapped its emergency reserve to respond to disruptions or supply shortage concerns. The most recent saw about 700 million barrels released after Hurricane Katrina. This prospect was "taking some of the steam out of this (price)rally," said Jim Ritterbusch, of energy consultancy Ritterbusch and Associates. With 85% of US offshore oil and gas production at risk of being affected, analysts predict that oil prices will rise further until Gustav has run its course. Oil markets are waiting for Gustav PetroMatrix analyst Olivier Jakob "It looks as though the hurricane is on track to inflicting damage," said Ken Hasegawa, an analyst at broker Newedge in Tokyo. Fellow oil analyst, Peter McGuire of Commodities Warrants Australia, predicted that the impact of Gustav could lead to oil prices returning above $130 a barrel, a price last seen in July.

Hurricane Gustav likely to be deadly as it heads down throat of 'Loop Current'

It happened in 2005. "Katrina went over the Loop Current and intensified rapidly," said Mark DeMaria, a Colorado-based expert on hurricane strength with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Then less than a month later a weak tropical storm named Rita followed Katrina into the Loop Current. Thirty hours later it was a Category 5 monster.

Both Katrina and Rita later weakened — which often happens — to Category 3 storms by landfall.

In the last several years, meteorologists have focused more attention on the Loop Current, which is only a couple of hundred miles long and not even 100 miles wide. The evidence linking it to the worst storms is beyond circumstantial, Shay said.

clipped from www.msnbc.msn.com WASHINGTON - The difference between a monster and a wimp for Gulf of Mexico hurricanes often comes down to a small patch of warm deep water that's easy to miss. It's called the Loop Current, and hurricane trackers say Gustav is headed right for it, reminiscent of Katrina. Gustav is likely to reach this current late Saturday, experts say. What happens next will be crucial, maybe deadly. The meandering Loop Current, located in the southeastern gulf, provides loads of hurricane fuel. It was a key stopover for nearly all the Gulf Coast killers of the past, including Katrina and Camille, said Florida International University professor Hugh Willoughby, former director of the government's hurricane research division.

Gustav likely to be deadly as it heads down throat of

It happened in 2005. "Katrina went over the Loop Current and intensified rapidly," said Mark DeMaria, a Colorado-based expert on hurricane strength with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Then less than a month later a weak tropical storm named Rita followed Katrina into the Loop Current. Thirty hours later it was a Category 5 monster.

Both Katrina and Rita later weakened — which often happens — to Category 3 storms by landfall.

In the last several years, meteorologists have focused more attention on the Loop Current, which is only a couple of hundred miles long and not even 100 miles wide. The evidence linking it to the worst storms is beyond circumstantial, Shay said.

clipped from www.msnbc.msn.com WASHINGTON - The difference between a monster and a wimp for Gulf of Mexico hurricanes often comes down to a small patch of warm deep water that's easy to miss. It's called the Loop Current, and hurricane trackers say Gustav is headed right for it, reminiscent of Katrina. Gustav is likely to reach this current late Saturday, experts say. What happens next will be crucial, maybe deadly. The meandering Loop Current, located in the southeastern gulf, provides loads of hurricane fuel. It was a key stopover for nearly all the Gulf Coast killers of the past, including Katrina and Camille, said Florida International University professor Hugh Willoughby, former director of the government's hurricane research division.

ALERT: Weather Warning for South Africa

Seems as though this is going to be a weekend dominated by the weather in a few parts of the world. In Cape Town and along the Coast huge waves are forecast. Usually huge swells are classified as 5 metres, the forecost this time is 7-10m. That's a 3 storey building.

Weathersa: Extremely dangerous conditions for the development of runaway fires are expected over Limpopo, Gauteng, eastern part of North-West Province, northern Free State, Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal.

clipped from www.weathersa.co.za Gale force westerly winds (35kt/65km/h) are expected in places over the Western Cape. Strong-gale to storm strength winds (in excess of 80km/h) are expected along the Western Cape Coast, south of Cape Point, spreading to East London on Sunday. Very rough seas with destructive waves in excess of 7m, coinciding with spring high tides, are expected along the Western Cape coast, spreading to Durban by Sunday evening. Heavy falls of rain are expected in places over the western parts of the Western Cape overnight(Saturday). Very cold, wet and windy conditions are expected to set in over the western parts of the Western and Northern Cape by evening, spreading north and east to include the southern high grounds of the Northern Cape and the interior of the Eastern Cape by Sunday. Snowfalls are expected over the western high ground of the Western Cape as well as the south-western high ground of the Northern Cape overnight into Sunday morning.

More Ways to Make a Difference

Bring your own mug to the cafe and carry your own water container (read about the ultra-cool reusable water bottle and coffee cup here and here).

clipped from noimpactman.typepad.com Drive less. Drive less. Fly less. Walk more, and walk *to* places. Ideally, walk to the grocery store. Start buying food and household products that are only made of things they can pronounce. Collect all of your trash each day and so you can see how much you produce. Try to go a month without making any purchases other than food and energy. Avoid bottled water (read why here and here). Join Freecycle, where you can give away what you don't need and get second-hand stuff for free. Pray. When the activity is fun, good for the environment, and also affects personal health (physically and also psychologically), it's much easier to maintain. So if you like biking, bike. If you like cooking, cook local. Never use your car for a trip of less than two miles. Walk or bike. Notice the benefits to your physical fitness. Swear off plastic bags.

Low Impact Man: How to Lower Your Impact Now

It is amazing how hard it is, for example, to buy food that doesn't come in packaging., To do this you have to visit smaller markets, and especially fruit and vegetable markets.

clipped from noimpactman.typepad.com A few weeks ago, I asked readers, "If a friend decided they wanted to do something about the environment, how would you tell him or her to start?" So just in case you or a friend wants to start, here are 50 of the answers, in no particular order and boiled down to their essence. You can read the full versions here and follow the included links for further explanation (and thanks so much to all who contributed): Read the heartbreaking article "Plastic Ocean". Buy fewer things. Don´t buy on impulse. Ask yourself if the thing you're buying is something that you really need. Understand the impact of the products that you buy on the environment, from resource extraction through to disposal (watching The Story of Stuff will help). Eat less meat (read here to understand why).

We must make our energy choices “carefully, intelligently and co-operatively”

EROEI is, or should be, the most important physical criterion used to assess the practicability of a proposed energy system for two reasons:

clipped from europe.theoildrum.com First, if the EROEI of an energy system is 1:1 or lower, it is no longer an energy source. As the EROEI drops below 1:1, it becomes an energy sink. This is important now, because society currently benefits from such high EROEI from fossil fuels that the low EROEI of alternatives may not be as obvious as it would otherwise be. The growth in use of corn-based ethanol as a substitute for fossil fuel in the US vehicle fleet is an example where it is uncertain that the biofuel-based energy system delivers any net energy (Cleveland et al, 2006)20. Second, the energy choices made now, if they are not made with a grasp of the wider implications of a reduction in our energy systems’ overall EROEI, will cause a profound, painful and largely unexpected and apparently inexplicable reduction in the complexity of society: in other words, an unmanaged and protracted collapse.

Energy Return on Investment - a simple equation behind why civilisations fail

As population densities and specialisation increase, the energy systems that sustain them have to deliver more net energy. In doing so, they allow the population to growth further and a still greater percentage of that growing population to become “non-productive” specialists.

clipped from europe.theoildrum.com Although EROEI had not been codified until recent decades, from its first beginnings all life has had to expend energy in order to capture energy from its environment: if a fox does not obtain more energy from eating rabbits that it consumes catching them, it will not survive long; similarly tulips, bacteria and humans. From the days of the earliest hunter-gatherers, the nature of human societies has been governed by their success in capturing energy (primarily food energy) at an energy profit11. In The Collapse of Complex Societies (Tainter, 1988)12 and Collapse (Diamond, 2005)13 the authors examine the reasons why societies of all sizes, from small isolated settlements up to the Roman Empire, collapsed. Diamond identifies four reasons why societies collapse: resource depletion; climate change; hostile neighbours; friendly neighbours. Tainter focuses on “energy gain”.

Cars and Phones - Ergo!

Imagine powering up cars the same way we recharge our phones - at outlets everywhere.
It's an ambitious plan that will work...sort of. The plan forgets one thing. The energy involved in retrofitting the world's auto-industry, and regridding the current garage infratructure. That said, it's one of the better ideas I've seen.

clipped from www.wired.com The problem, he decided, was oil-consuming, CO2-spewing cars. The solution was to get rid of them. Not just some, and not just by substituting hybrids or flex fuels. No half measures. The internal combustion engine had to be retired. The future was in electric cars. Car batteries, then and now, are heavy and expensive, don't last long, and take forever to recharge. In five minutes you can fill a car with enough gas to go 300 miles, but five minutes of charging at home gets you only about 8 miles in an electric car. Clever tricks, like adding "range extenders"—gas engines that kick in when a battery dies—end up making the cars too expensive. Agassi reimagined the entire automotive ecosystem by proposing a new concept he called the Electric Recharge Grid Operator. It was an unorthodox mashup of the automotive and mobile phone industries. Instead of gas stations on every corner, the ERGO would blanket a country with a network of "smart" charge spots.

Heinberg: Losing Control

Humankind has control issues, and they’re about to get a lot worse.

clipped from www.postcarbon.org Once we lived with a sense of our own limits. We may have been a hubristic kind of animal, but we knew that our precocity was contained within a universe that was overwhelmingly beyond our influence. That sensibility is about to return. Along with it will come a sense of frustration at finding many expectations dashed. Will the waning of human control over the environment lead to a religious revival? Perhaps. Given our propensity for language-making and hence question-posing and story-telling, it is likely that many of us will find mythological lessons in this historic transformation (recall Icarus or Prometheus). Whether or not it’s ultimately good for us morally to have a sense of limits, the reality is that our powers are indeed limited, and our ability to control our environment must ever be subordinated to the imperative to live in harmony with it.

Bottom of the Real Estate Market? Not even close...

Here’s what I think will happen: First, we are in great danger of mounting a futile campaign to sustain the unsustainable, that is, of defending suburbia at all costs.

These days, an awful lot of people — the production builders, the realtors — are waiting for the “bottom” in the real-estate industry with hopes that the suburban house-building orgy will resume. They are waiting in vain. The project of suburbia is over. We will build no more of it. Now we’re stuck with what’s there. Sometimes whole societies make unfortunate decisions or go down tragic pathways. Suburbia was ours.

clipped from freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com What will U.S. suburbs look like in 40 years? “The suburbs have three destinies, none of them exclusive: as materials salvage, as slums, and as ruins.” There are many ways of describing the fiasco of suburbia, but these days I refer to it as the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world. I say this because American suburbia requires an infinite supply of cheap energy in order to function and we have now entered a permanent global energy crisis that will change the whole equation of daily life. Their answers are informative and often fascinating. As always, Kunstler is vastly entertaining as he advocates what one critic calls “apocalyptic utopianism,” while Antus gets a bit Swiftian on us.

SA: E coli counts in our rivers off-the-charts unhealthy

You might say 'so what', except these rivers are used to irrigate, and then that gunk ends up on the fruit and vegetables you eat. A bacteria count thousands of times above a recommended rate is scary.

clipped from www.businessday.co.za CAPE TOWN — Stellenbosch University scientists are investigating the levels of harmful bacteria on locally grown fruit and vegetables, hoping to establish a link between the bugs on the food and contaminated river water used for irrigating crops. “With our massively polluted rivers, all producers will have a hard time producing clean fruit and vegetables.” One of the rivers Barnes has analysed closely is the Plankenburg River, a tributary of the Eerste River, which farmers use to irrigate crops. She measured the levels of E coli to gauge the extent of pollution. She found the levels of E coli were thousands of times higher than SA’s recommended safety levels of 2000 bacteria per 100ml of water, a threshold that is already twice that of the European Union. In January 2006, for example, the E coli count was 9,2-million per 100ml, a slight drop on April 2005, when she recorded 10,8-million E coli per 100ml.

Olympics: Rise of the new Power

And some blue skies...

clipped from www.salon.com All is right with the world, for as long as the world lasts, and I've even had a stroke of Olympic luck. But here, at my first gold medal ceremony, with the whole crowd wailing out a national anthem they once saw little use for, I feel like a very small and weak foreigner, unable to lift the load of this new history from my back. Maybe that's all sour grapes from a falling superpower. Maybe it's OK if new rivalries emerge, sporting or otherwise, to replace tired ones.

The Iceman cometh - and the future is All Black for the Springboks!

New Zealand are back at full strength for this weekend's Newlands clash - but you can also bank on Isaia Toeava making a real impact from the bench.

NVDL: This ought to be a cracker.

clipped from www.sportingo.com An encore may just be what the doctor ordered as the All Blacks named an unchanged line-up aside from Isaia “Ice” Toeava replacing Anthony Tuitavake on the bench. On the other hand, the Springboks have made some enforced, rest and form changes with Andries Bekker coming in at lock for the injured Bakkies Botha, world-class players Fourie du Preez, Schalk Burger and Bryan Habana returning, and veteran Percy Montgomery taking over at custodian for his 100th game – the first South African to do so – ironically on his home ground. The Boks put on a belated celebration for their former president Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday with a lop-sided victory over Argentina last weekend.

Electricity - Coal - Fuel > A Shortage of one leads to a systemic energy failure

It seems to me that there is likely to be a very short path from petroleum shortages to electricity shortages. There are a lot of issues involved, from the fact that the fuels used in electricity production are themselves dependent on petroleum for their extraction and transportation... - The Oil Drum

NVDL: In fact we suffered this Ouroboros state (the snake eating itself) when SA suffered electricity supply shortages and thus mines couldn't function (including coal mines).

clipped from www.theoildrum.com Unless there is an amazingly good allocation system, once there is a shortage of oil, of say, 20%, it is going to start affecting electricity production, because the oil deficit will start affecting fuels used for electricity production. 3. Our electrical infrastructure is very dependent on petroleum inputs. 7. If we start having electric supply disruptions, these disruptions are likely to start chain reactions of disruptions of other types. 8. While it is theoretically possible to get around a lot of oil shortage problems by building new infrastructure, as a practical matter this is not likely to work, because of timing, the enormity of the project, and our current financial problems. Because of all of the foregoing issues, I expect that we will encounter electrical difficulties within twenty years. The timeperiod may even be much shorter than this.. It seems to me that the model we should be envisioning for future electric supply is local electric supply.

Giant Retailers Look to Sun for Energy Savings

This is encouraging...

clipped from www.nytimes.com In recent months, chains including Wal-Mart Stores, Kohl’s, Safeway and Whole Foods Market have installed solar panels on roofs of their stores to generate electricity on a large scale. One reason they are racing is to beat a Dec. 31 deadline to gain tax advantages for these projects. Analysts are not sure how much power the rooftop projects could ultimately produce, but they say it could be enough to help shave total electricity demand. In many communities, stores are among the biggest energy users. Depending on location and weather, the solar panels generate 10 to 40 percent of the power a store needs. Coal generation costs about 6 cents for a kilowatt hour, which is enough electricity to run a hair dryer for an hour. Natural gas generation costs about 9 cents a kilowatt hour, said Reese Tisdale, a senior analyst with the consulting firm Emerging Energy Research. In comparison, “best case” for power from solar panels is about 25 to 30 cents a kilowatt hour, he said.

Iran Blockade Underway?

Operation Brimstone

The build up of naval forces in the Gulf will be one of the largest multi-national naval armadas since the First and Second Gulf Wars. The intent is to create a US/EU naval blockade (which is an Act of War under international law) around Iran (with supporting air and land elements) to prevent the shipment of benzene and certain other refined oil products headed to Iranian ports.

Iran has limited domestic oil refining capacity and imports 40% of its benzene. Cutting off benzene and other key products would cripple the Iranian economy. The neo-cons are counting on such a blockade launching a war with Iran. - Global Research

clipped from www.globalresearch.ca Operation Brimstone ended only one week ago. This was the joint US/UK/French naval war games in the Atlantic Ocean preparing for a naval blockade of Iran and the likely resulting war in the Persian Gulf area. The massive war games included a US Navy supercarrier battle group, an US Navy expeditionary carrier battle group, a Royal Navy carrier battle group, a French nuclear hunter-killer submarine plus a large number of US Navy cruisers, destroyers and frigates playing the "enemy force".

Oil Porn

Unfortunately it is articles like these from apparently intelligent sources that give the public a false sense of security. The long term trend for inflation and interest rates is up. An article on Denmark I posted recently put it very well: Oil prices ought to be taxed more than they are to break our addiction to the stuff. Instead, like junkies we celebrate when our access to unimpeded hits improves. It's stupid.

The long term trend for energy supply is down (even if we curb demand somewhat) meaning an average upward movement for oil prices. People should be changing their living and working arrangements, change their identities from consumers to conservers, but what are they doing? Breathing a sigh of relief, going: "Phew, at least that's over, " and going back to their lives and jobs.

The spike to $147 was a valuable message. Are we learning from it? Probably we will remain in a paradigm of wishful thinking beyond $150 which I maintain will be around Christmas, even though oil is $112 now. But does anyone remember, earlier this year oil was below $100?

clipped from www.telegraph.co.uk A return to relatively normal oil prices would take the sting out of inflation If the trend continues into September at anything like the same rate of descent, most of the inflationary spike of the past 12 months will miraculously have been sliced away. This is a dramatic reversal, and it is worth trying to work out why it is happening and what it means.

Friedman: Can we be as energy smart as Denmark?

Thoma L. Friedman for the New York Times: "Danes imposed on themselves a set of gasoline taxes, CO2 taxes and building-and-appliance efficiency standards that allowed them to grow their economy — while barely growing their energy consumption — and gave birth to a Danish clean-power industry that is one of the most competitive in the world today. Denmark today gets nearly 20 percent of its electricity from wind. America? About 1 percent."

clipped from www.nytimes.com Our toilet even had two different flushing powers depending on — how do I say this delicately — what exactly you’re flushing. A two-gear toilet! I’ve never found any of this at an American hotel. Oh, if only we could be as energy efficient as Greenland! And boy, you knew it was rush hour because 50 percent of the traffic in every intersection was bicycles. That is roughly the percentage of Danes who use two-wheelers to go to and from work or school every day here. If I lived in a city that had dedicated bike lanes everywhere, including one to the airport, I’d go to work that way, too. It means less traffic, less pollution and less obesity. What was most impressive about this day, though, was that it was raining. No matter. The Danes simply donned rain jackets and pants for biking. If only we could be as energy smart as Denmark!

High Heel Race

Why isn't this at the Olympics; I mean the degree of difficulty must be phenomenal. Have a look at the other 7 pictures. I'd like to see this becoming an international event at the very least.

clipped from news.yahoo.com Participants in a high heel race are on a start line at Red Square in Moscow, Saturday, July 19, 2008. Participants of the high heel run were challenged to race in stilettos of at least 9 cm (3.54 inches).